An integrated marketing communications campaign for Independent Play

Independent Play is a concert production company that aims to promote local and international independent music. Apart from this, Independent Play also conducts band management workshops for independent musicians in Metro Manila. For this campaign, the researcher will be focusing on the band management workshop side of the business. Independent Play falls under the music concert category of the events industry. According to Statistica 2019, revenue from music events have grown by 24% in 2019 and is bound to increase by another 24% in 2020. The growth rate is higher compared to its growth from 2017 to 2018 which is 22%. The number of concert goers also increased by 9.5% in 2019, higher than what it previously had in 2017 to 2018 which is 5%. It is expected to increase by 8.7% in 2020. To obtain the estimated number musicians in Metro Manila, the researcher utilized Facebook’s search hub, primarily because musicians of the Philippines rely on Facebook pages to get event invites. The researcher used the keywords “band”, “musician”, “artist”, “singer”, “performer” and “rapper” and limited the search on all cities of Metro Manila including parts of Rizal namely Cainta, San Mateo, and Antipolo. The researcher then manually counted the pages, discluding inactive ones, that he has found on all the cities and came up with a total number of 1,705 music artists. The SWOT analysis forwards the strengths of Independent Play with its research-based method of band management, established media presence, and credentials for handling Ysanygo, an indie pop duo who rose from the independent scene under Independent Play’s leadership. The company, however, does not put enough marketing efforts towards its workshops thereby being overshadowed by its prime business line which is the concert productions side. Furthermore, the workshops conducted by Independent Play are free of charge which makes the business line hard to maintain due to its cost. The opportunity lies by strengthening its communication across all social media platforms and setting up a YouTube account as an alternate source of information for artists who want to become successful independently. A survey on the Usage, Attitudes, and Image of Band Management Workshop with 249 individuals revealed the consumer insight that musicians want to earn back the efforts and time they have given to their music careers by finally understanding the nature of the music business. This led the researcher to come up with his Big Idea – Master the Art of Marketing Your Music. Due to its niche position, we will tap touch-points that our target market use regularly and on a daily basis to optimize costs and for a more targeted approach. Our main tool is Events Marketing to be supported by Digital Media Marketing, and Public Relations